


Noel

by toujours_nigel



Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-04
Updated: 2012-06-04
Packaged: 2017-11-06 20:42:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/422982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“When I was young,” Laurie said, apropos of nothing, voice a low drone hardly disturbing the quietness they’d settled comfortably around them, “I’d planned on marrying my mother.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Noel

“When I was young,” Laurie said, apropos of nothing, voice a low drone hardly disturbing the quietness they’d settled comfortably around them, “I’d planned on marrying my mother.” He’d worked all afternoon, at the paper he had to finish over Christmas, bent on making real the excuses he’d spun, and at the end of it, making the best of a bad meal, had been neatly tucked into bed by Ralph at his indulgent best, carelessly tender, and forgoing sleep himself to card fingers through his hair.  
  
Now, he hummed noncommittally, and Laurie wondered a moment whether he’d let the peace lull him into too liberal speech—certainly Sandy would titter, at a similar confession, and Alec quirk an eyebrow or a smile. Ralph was rather harder to read, especially now, when to him the sulphur smell of gunpowder still hung in a haze in Ralph’s rooms when he found them empty—perhaps it always would, certainly he would never think, again, that he knew what Ralph felt. He wanted, now, to say more, but found he couldn’t, when he couldn’t gauge whether Ralph’s silence was repulsed or understanding or merely amused, and relapsed himself, sullenly, into a silence that felt now deeply uncomfortable, like a thin blanket spread on hard ground.  
  
It was impossible to see Ralph’s face, when he finally spoke, but his hand had stilled, and Laurie pressed his cheek to it, to feel against his skin the closed-off scars. “Were you thinking that, at her house?” His voice was distantly kind, the sort of thing one had seen in the great R. R. Lanyon, calming a twirp who’d stumbled too close and was too overwhelmed to make his escape. “Did you come back for that?” He hadn’t been expected back, and hadn’t explained his return. And sure Ralph was wondering, now, what to make of that confession, maybe even thought him morbidly jealous of Straike, when that wasn’t the thing, at all.  
  
“She had a box of my things, boy’s treasure-chest sort of thing,” he said, after trying vainly to make out Ralph’s lineaments. She had felt him slipping from her, these last months, and his discomfort at sharing a house with her husband even for the length of days, and tried in the few hours they had had alone—while Reverend Straike inflicted his company on old men to sick to civilly refuse him—to draw him back to her with reminisces of being alone against the world. And if he’d chafed at it, he’d been conscious enough of terse letters and too few phone calls, and the flimsiness of his excuses in avoiding visits, that he’d made an effort to be pleasant, even—what was harder, when she inflicted her happiness on him—to be kind. It had been going well, and almost, in laughing over his childish possessiveness, they’d made peace again, the sole bright spot in the day, in the three days he’d spent with her. And then Straike had come in, and… “There was very nearly a scene.”  
  
Again the heavy silence, scarce breathing. I remembered, he wanted to say, that I’d promised to never be unkind, but Ralph hadn’t had a kind mother, that much he’d gleaned from the tight-lipped smiles that answered any queries about his childhood, and the triviality of his own sorrow made him mute. It was cruel to force Ralph into sympathy when he’d endured much worse.  
  
In a while Ralph rose to ensure the doors were indeed locked, never content till he’d checked himself. The low sounds of Ralph preparing himself and the flat for sleep were blessedly familiar, and he found himself waking from a doze when Ralph got into bed, and turned, eyes still shut, to press his face against the cool silk of his pyajamas. “I’m glad I’m home,” he said, and felt Ralph smile slowly against his temple. All day, after that, he’d wanted to be here, and even his mother’s embrace at parting had felt too inadequately fragile. _I've often had a feeling that there's nowhere I really belong,_ he’d said, and Ralph had said, _You belong with me._ It seemed important to remind Ralph he hadn’t forgotten. “I am.”  
  
“I know,” Ralph allowed, voice heavy with affection. “Now sleep,” he said, and brushed a kiss to his forehead, cradled him closer. “I have you. Sleep, Spuddy.”


End file.
